Yea what happens when your grouped? All people in the group get put on your computer?

[quote=Rinox]
But that would mean that if the host drops, the game ends for the other users in the instance...and that isn't the case.
[/quote]

Not at all. Sacred does the same thing. The first person into a server actually takes the load on their computer. When they exit/crash/wahtever, the person in the server with the fastest computer actually gets a message come up saying "you're the host now!". Plus not everyone would get put on your computer, as we know everyone loads the area (as seen by people on 56k taking years ) and their character, it would simply be that all details of where you move/what skill you use and things like that would be sent to the hosts computer and sent back out to everyone elses. I assume. Obviously I don't know.

[quote=11b]
If the honor system is so bad, and the game is so bad then why do they have 132 full servers everynight?
[/quote]

Because if people enjoy the rest of the game, they will put up with it. Not to mention the lvl 60s who are doing the 'honourable' ganking of lvl 15s love the system, because they get rewarded for griefing.

Look at UO. Their PvP system is a pile of shit. It used to be that if you weren't a 'dexxer' (i.e. someone with max dex and using a dagger, the fastest weapon in-game) then you wouldn't stand a chance at winning. Then they released the AoS expansion, and necromancy was the new easy way to win at PvP. Now, with the Samurai Empire expansion, unless you'rea ninja archer (hide, shoot, hide, shoot, hide shoot until death) you won't win in PvP.

As a result, UOers have *finally* stopped going to PvP areas in most of the shards. And as a result, the UO dev team are finally looking at balancing PvP. 8 years after the game was first released.

Arathorn, i hear ya! I have the time, but not really the money... always swore i'd never be ripped off by paying to play... but, well... MMO's are addictive, and free shards are never as good as the real thing...

and as mole and satis said, you can't compare wow and gw. wow is an mmorpg, gw is a crpg.

Ive played on 3 different servers. The only time I have ever been "ganked" is when I was in a contested zone (essentially a Free for all area) and I knew I would probably get ganked.

In fact right now Im leveling in that zone. I know that the odds are high I will get ganked by either a group or high levels people.

now heres the big thing, SO WHAT? When you die all you do is return to the nearest graveyard as a spirit, run to your body, and revive. There is no death penatly so who cares if I get ganked. Theres only a death penalty if you dont return to your body.

I have fraps, Im going to make a video of whats happens when you get ganked and show you.


BTW when you die in WOW, you get no exp debt unlike in Eq2.

im perfectly aware of what happens when you get ganked. the same is in uo. if you die, you die, as you say, big deal. but yes, it is a big deal if you dont wanna keep being killed.

in uo its only in one 'facet' (a place called Felucca) so if you only wanna die from monsters, don't go there. It's easy to avoid coz its basically almost identical to the non-pvp facet (Trammel) so theres no real reason to go there (other than a certain type of quest, in which case if you're doing that quest you'll be in a group of about 30).

To me the problem with ganking is that people do it to annoy you (res killing too) and that does piss me off. People do it to be assholes, which is why i love GW way of stopping you being attacked by someone unless you're in a pvp arena (course they can still aggro monsters on to you). The point I'm making is that to me, gankers are one of the lowest level of players you can get, and high level gankers picking on low level ones are the worst by far. It's called bullying in real life

With me, I think people are assholes anyway, and when the online world is filled with even more assholes (coz there are plenty of 'nice' people irl who turn into total wankers online), i wanna avoid as many as i can. Which is one reason why i NEVER group with anyone in GW anymore, unless its one of the guys from here, or one of my guildmates.

anyhoo as i said, i'd love to play the game, if it was singleplayer. Blizzard seems to attract wankers as their main online clients and as such, I'll never play an online Blizzard game, or play one of their singleplayer games online again.

I didn't think the honor system was that bad. I enjoy the game. I have EQ2 i don't like it at all. I tried to play it just didn't get into it. Just like GW not my style and i think most people play it cuz its free. I dont' mind paying for games before NGE hit i was paying about $52.00 a month for for 3 swg accts, now i just have the 1 wow and the 1 station pass so if i feel the need to play swg or eq/eq2 i can. I figure that i'm saving alot of money since i stopped smoking and drinking that i can replace it with the monthly fees.

heh sounds like good reasoning to me, if you're gonna give up smoking then why not! hehe.

Or host passes to the next user? Sure, it's not likely, but it's been done (In halo 2, for example)

And 11b, like I said, It would work just the same as any other online game. Quake, Fear, Halflife, Soldat, heck, Even baldurs gate I would assume is run by one person hosting the game. Again, it's not likely, but those guys Arena net are an innovative bunch. Of course they get put on your computer (Or, the representations of them do, rather)

The no death penalty thing sounds like turd to me. I like having a death penalty, it makes you think twice before going in like a maniac. However, from your post, I also assume that you need to get back to your corpse to get your shit back, which levels it out nicely.

I do however, wish that in EQ, the death penalty was a physical affliction, such as guild wars where you are weakened. I prefer that sort of thing.

Um Mole, Im just going to come out and say this, your idea that Guild Wars puts you and your group on your local machine when you leave town is one of the most retarded things I have ever heard about Guild Wars. I offered this idea to my guild and they all said you where a newb. So thanks but try again. Give A-net a little more credit than that.

And about the death penatly, You only have to go back to your corpse to regain your experiance, if you dont, then when you rez your equipt items take durability damage and you lose some exp.

I am giving them credit. I'm giving them the credit in the sense of it's brilliant Idea, an idea that works.

It keeps server cost down, which is the main thing. It means that they can stream the updates to hundreds of people at once with out putting on extra load on to the servers and to be honest, I don't know why the don't do it.

I know I would, that's for sure.

Also, if your guild are anything like you, I don't care what they say, but as you and I both know we disagree a lot. Yet, when you post on here with your crazy government scandals and conspiracy theories, I don't shit on them. What I do do (When I can be bothered to read them) is attempt to make a valid post for or against the idea. I do however admit, that I tend to ignore the topics you start that seem to be related to polotics or government in some way, Mostly because the topic at hand is not of interest to me and partly because our personalities seem to colide.

So how about, instead of just sayings "it's retarded" like the noob that your guild seems to be so happy to call me (yes, there is a difference between a newb and a noob, but I know which your guild meant) you give me some reasons why it is retarded?

The whole system would work. Just the way all the other games I mentioned work, and oh, I don't know, Xbox live too. Sure, there aren't any released MMO's on Xbox live (Except for the Final Fantasy XI online beta) but by the same token, I see my match of splintercell or Halo, just as an instance could be on guildwars. Or more so, Exactly like it is in the RPG Sacred. A world, with hundreds of enemies, available to 16 charachters. Sure, it's a Diablo style game graphics wise (well, much nicer, but you know, the whole birds eye view thing) it's still just the same as a guild wars instance.

At the end of the day, the only online game that Arena net have is this. City of Heroes/City of Villans is NCSoft. Sure, they may get some money from this, but this game is free and it would be an incredibly smart way to keep server cost down.

The only reason I can see against the idea, is it would make it easier for people to hack. However, there are plenty of hacks in MMO's anyway, and it would be the equivalent of playing closed mulitplayer that so many RPG's offer.

lol 'n00b' is always such a good argument to use

It's perfectly likely that Anet don't use another host. However, although this guy isn't a dev, he is a highly placed moderator on the unofficial official guild wars forum. He could of course still be wrong but still:

[quote=EchoSex]
Easy question. It's free because it's not really a MMO. Basicly, it's Diablo II on a higher standard. The social servers are no more than a virtual chat room, and all the actual fighting is done on personal playing fields that run off of your own PC and friend's PC. The servers are mainly used just for the social areas that GW has, and at that, it splits them up into districts to keep it lag free.
[/quote]

And a link to the topic: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/show ... tance+host
Someone later on says its all server side, however I've never seen 'em on the forum to my knowledge, certainly not recently. But this isn't to say they're wrong either.

Either way, whatever they do, it's damned good considering 56k users can use it no problem (except when there's a huge update like the pvp weekend). And of course having all the maps on your computer cuts down on bandwidth (and therefore cost) as well, so literally all the server/host/whatever has to handle is WHERE your character is and WHAT it is doing. Pretty damned nifty if you ask me. So even if your pc doesn't end up as the host, most of the work still goes on from the clients pcs rather than from anets side.

Unfortunately, I can't find anything from the devs. But still, isn't it nice to have a discussion with points rather than insults? :p

Do you know how much people could hack and dup items if guild wars was run off your own computer? It would be insane, you would be able to dup gold, and weapons, and have hacks. Everything is done server side.

Do me a favor, look inside your Guild Wars folder on your computer. You have 3 files.

Gw.dat
gw.exe
gw.tmp

Now your seriously going to believe that you can run a WHOLE gw instance on your own pc, with just 3 files? Think of the security issues. Do you want other people from outside your LAN to be able to contect to a instanced zone of gw without your knowledge? Dont you think Anet would have put a disclaimer somewhere saying "NOTE OTHER PLAYERS MAY CONNECT TO YOUR COMPUTER DURING INSTANCE ZONE"? You think they would keep that secret?

I didn't say anything about characters being stored on the computer. Of course I know, I played D2, one of the most hacked games in the world! rofl. And yes, I'm aware there are 3 files, I'm in the folder regularly since I have to swap it around to run 2 instances of the game. I'd like to note that for people who have been pretty much everywhere, that gw.dat is usually around 2gig in size. Because it holds every single map.

Sooo if you look at my previous point:
"And of course having all the maps on your computer cuts down on bandwidth (and therefore cost) as well, so literally all the server/host/whatever has to handle is WHERE your character is and WHAT it is doing. Pretty damned nifty if you ask me. So even if your pc doesn't end up as the host, most of the work still goes on from the clients pcs rather than from anets side. " (stupid quote not working *kicks forum*)
then even if they don't host, your pc still does most of the work. After all, its usually graphics in a game that kill it, and loading up a map from a server is never much fun.

However again I'd just like to point out one thing, which has no bearing on whether gw does it or not, but again, the Sacred servers use your computer as a host, and NO ONE has ever seen a hacked character in Closed multiplayer. Open, there are plenty of hacks and cheats around, but in nearly 2 years, there have been NO sightings or wonderings if any character is hacked.

Oh and I sure don't think Anet are any less scrupulous than other companies. I think if they DO do it like this, then the disclaimer will be hidden in the EULA. And if not, there's still probably 1001 things hidden in there that I wouldn't like if I actually bothered to read it. Companies know that no one reads their agreements

I would just like to emphasise (spl?) the idea of a closed game.

Closed games are where you're charachter is stored on the servers. All the items are stored, on the servers. All the stats are stored, on the servers. Sure, this doesn't make it imposible to hack a char, but it makes it down right hard, and if you suddenly logged in with a char that didn't match what the server says, the server characther would be the one the game runs from.

Also, everytime you load an instance, what's not to say that your map isn't checked? Simular to running an MD5 on a file. They could easily check the integrity of the map, and see if it was the same as their copy. Infact, that is probably sort of what they do anyway, to see which updates you need for the area (Like the first time you zone in) which again, would load the server's version of the map, not your own, which would prevent hacking.

EDIT: And to the disclaimer, I haven't read a EULA since God knows when, and I'm assuming you haven't read the whole thing either (unless you were incredibly bored) but it could easily be in there.

Heck, I haven't seen a warning like that on any game that is done in the normal way online games are done. I've not even seen that on Xbox live.

instances don't run on your computers.

The reason is hacking.

If the instance was running on your computer, you could create your own instance you're sitting in by yourself, hack into the runtime memory environment using something like BlackICE, and then play with the variables in memory. You could hack crap in pre-searing to drop greens, you could make every creature give you 100,000xp when you kill it, you could have piles of 10mill gold coins every 2 feet...there's no limits to what you could do. Anything that could allow someone to take advantage of the game HAS to be kept on a controlled server, or someone, somewhere is going to crack it.

Now, if trusted computing were real, then maybe it's possible...but trusted computing is when your computer is no longer your computer. I will stop using computers altogether before I buy a "trusted" box.

Except for the stuff I just said in my post.

they could hack all the want off line. Heck, I've seen adverts for private guildwars servers, the could do it there too.

But once they hit the official login, the data could very easily be varified and invalid items, maps, stats etc, reset to what they should be.